Fast lane

The Winnebago brand is about to disappear from local showrooms after head office in the US discovered someone was using their name without permission.

01 March 2013Richard Blackburn

A US judge ruled against the use of the Winnebago name in Australasia.

Winnebago is a brand name that you could argue has entered the Australian vernacular, a little like the Band-Aid and Esky. But the man responsible for introducing the name locally, Bruce Binns, has announced he is ''rebranding'' his business with the slightly less-catchy moniker of Avida. Why, you ask? Well, in the middle of 2012, the Federal Court found that Binns had ''intentionally hijacked'' the brand name without actually asking head office in the US if it minded. Luckily for Binns, it seems things move pretty slowly in the world of motorhomes - the Aussie outfit had been ''borrowing'' the brand name for at least three decades before the yanks caught on. They took Binns to court and won, and the businessman appears to have grudgingly conceded the gig might be up. The official press release announcing the name change says ''the legal battle over the rights to use the Winnebago name in Australasia has convinced us that we need to create our own Australian identity''. The Aussies could do with spin of that calibre on the continent at the moment. But Binns isn't going down without a fight, and it seems as though he plans to milk the name for all it's worth until the final hammer comes down. He says that ''to assist in providing credibility to the Avida brand, we intend to promote Avida as the makers of the Australian Winnebago, linking our heritage since 1965 to the newest motorhome brand on the market,'' he says. There's no truth in the rumour that Binns considered Ford, Holden and Toyota as potential new brand names before settling on Avida.

Caught on camera

A campaigner against speed cameras in South Australia caused a YouTube stir this week when he filmed a speed camera operator parked in a breakdown lane on the Lonsdale Highway. A video posted under the name Justin Healey shows the camera operator being woken from a deep slumber and informed he is illegally parked by the camera-wielding activist. Not so, say the South Australian police. They say camera cars are exempt from a number of laws under the Road Traffic Act and Australian Road Rules, because the car is an authorised vehicle. Fair enough, but the police media statement also says that the ''vehicle was parked there for calibration of the speed camera''.

Apparently the calibration procedure involves the operator closing his eyes and resting his chin on his chest.

Offending article

With sales of electric vehicles not meeting initial estimates, EV maker Tesla seems to be eyeing off a potentially lucrative second income stream. This week the company's boss Elon Musk estimated that a recent negative article in The New York Times could have cost the company more than $100 million. Talk about the pen being mightier than the sword. Musk told the Bloomberg news agency the article, which suggested the Model S didn't live up to its stated driving range, ''probably affected us to the tune of tens of millions, to the order of $100 million''. Musk also claims the article led to the cancellation of ''a few hundred'' Model S orders, which, at $100,000 a pop, is not an insignificant sum. Tesla says the journalist, John Broder, fudged the article. The paper denies Broder set out to damage the car's reputation, but admits he made a couple of errors of judgment. It isn't the first time Musk has lined up the media for a bad review. He sued the BBC for libel after Top Gear filmed a Tesla Roadster on a flat-bed truck when there was nothing wrong with it. A judge ruled in favour of the BBC.

Slick response

Still on Top Gear, it seems Clarkson and co may be headed for another controversy, with questions raised about the authenticity of a recent lap record set by the Pagani Huayra on its famed test track. Enthusiast websites and trainspotters have claimed the tyres on the Pagani were not road tyres, but slicks with grooves cut in them. That would make the lap ineligible under Top Gear's rules. After hounding by the Jalopnik website, Pagani has admitted it used two sets of tyres for the Top Gear filming, and also admits it told porkies about which tyres set the record. In an email to Jalopnik, Pagani says it ''reported Pirelli Pzero Corsa on our press release because we want, for communication reasons, to push them on the media.'' Pagani claimed the ''Trofeo'' tyres used were ''road legal'', but admitted they wouldn't want to use them in heavy rain. It's hardly a cheating scandal of Armstrong-esque proportions, but it should make for an interesting press conference when the lads arrive in Australia for next week's Top Gear Festival.

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